Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Zipping with speed thru pics, this deck, below, stopped me.
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A hearty bravo to the brainwave. Then, overdose-on-a-theme, the roof !
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Another bravo to whoever designed the interior of this home, from my favorite vantage point, the garden. Landscaping along the windows is a bit odd, glass rectangle edged with ferns, creating a terrarium'ish style. What to do instead? (First, replace sofa with a pair of similar styled chairs, that turn 360. Why the fortification of sofa only looking in?) Remove ferns & existing path, replace with bluestone rectangles, sized in width from outer edge of deck, fully to the house, scaled in length to each window, spaced the same distance apart as the window frames.

Pic, above, here.
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Color of patio chair, echoed inside with the bowl, and dark gray from chimney top to foundation.
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Next. Axis looking into the home is marvelous. What is its opposite axis? Double axis. If you have a focal point in one direction you must have another in the opposite. Has me curious.
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Lawn & large shrub at corner are thriving, sculptural.
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Almost a Garden Design course in a single pic.
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Garden & Be Well, XOT
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Notice the gutters at the roof line? Great example of darkish color rising up into the roof. Too often, gutters are painted much lighter than a roof, pulling the height of the roof lower. Another counterintuitive Garden Design layer.

Wednesday, March 30, 2016

"Proportion is the good breeding of architecture. It is that something, indefinable to the unprofessional eye, which gives repose and distinction to a room: in its origin a matter of nice mathematical calculation, of scientific adjustment of voids and masses, but in its effects as intangible as that all-pervading essence which the ancients called the soul." Edith Wharton

Very nice fix, above, to scale, proportion, flow. Yet there is an added design element not abiding to the rules of scale/proportion and landed onto the terrace from Mars.
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Which is the good fix? Which is the ill conceived addition?
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First, brava to the terrace design flanking the entire back of the home, flowing in vanishing threshold from every window/door.
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Yet, that is not the 'good fix'. Adding the checkerboard 'path' to the terrace is the 'good fix', a genius fix. I sense it was not in the original design, yet makes the original design magic. A nice reminder of, 'A landscape can be installed in a day, a garden takes a lifetime.' Many layers of nice thought, above.
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Yet one zone, above, is awkward.
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Have you nailed it yet? It was more common at the front end of the trend, but has tamed itself in recent years. The fireplace. Oh my. It's a fireplace with a house, not a house with a fireplace. Fireplace monument to the gods. The monolith floating in space at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, ca. 1968. A fireplace with no soul, merely a good salesman.
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Garden & Be Well, XO T

Pic, above, from the movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, here. Remember well, and not understanding seeing 2001 at its premier, not far from the Astrodome & Gulfgate Mall. Oh my the joy of growing up shopping there, especially, Sakowitz. Their clothes & shoes, and their fabulous decorations at Christmas. Neiman's was a wannabe back in those days ! Odd to learn, just now, below, Gulfgate housed some of NASA before it could be completed for workers. Helping mom choose dad's crypt the salesman shared his story of painting NASA buildings as fast as they could because NASA workers were sited all over Houston/Pasadena awaiting their buildings.
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In the early 1960s, while the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) was under construction in the Clear Lake area, NASA personnel opened temporary offices in center in about 3,000 square feet (280 m2) of floor space donated for the purpose by the Gulfgate management. MSC had a continuing operation there until additional office, engineering and laboratory space could be leased and made ready for occupation. Operations at the Gulfgate offices were largely concerned with procurement, personnel and public affairs.[5]

The shopping center was enclosed around 1967 and, after years of decline and competition, shuttered in 2000. In 2001 the original mall and the former Mervyns (across Woodridge) were demolished and redeveloped into a strip mall configuration, anchored by H-E-B, Best Buy, Office Depot, Marshalls, and Lowe's "